GIMP Roadmap

I remember asking Gimp devs why there is no non-destructive editing: i.e. applying effects in chain to a layer, without modifying its pixels, like you would process textures in 3d rendering pipeline (Photoshop and other commercial editors had it for ages), and back then Gimp devs replied that pipelining is a useless features, which will only confuse users (it was around 2009-2010). So years have passed, and now the amazing has happened:
https://wiki.gimp.org/wiki/Roadmap#GIMP_3.2
>Filter/Adjustment layers Needs complete GEGL port first, API for stacking GEGL ops on a layer will be available in 2.10
>Layer effects bevel/emboss, drop shadow etc., needs complete GEGL port first

TLDR: old Gimp had completely broken internal architecture "designed" by undergrad students, who had no experience working with graphics. That architecture was really clunky, rigid and unscalable, leading to impossibility of introducing even the most basic features, like pipelining. Now they try to bolt on GEGL - a former commercial architecture, used in motion picture, it was opensourced after its owner went bankrupt.

So their answer, about the feature being useless, was more of a damage control sour grapes propaganda. Like in USSR they always lied to you, that you don't need a car or even a good food, like sausages.

So yes, opensource retards cant even design a shader pipeline themselves, otherwise they would be working in a large company, earning a ton of money. If you ever wrote a shader for your video game, you're smarter than 95% of Gimp crowd.

>>12

No timeline

your layers/groups are the timeline

animation playback

Filters -> Animation -> Playback

Also, gifs are limited to 256 colors

a 256 color indexed palette is not the same as a flat 8-bit one. You can have any combination of 256 colors. Also, there are plugins for being able to export as APNG, among other things. But keep in mind that the whole point of a GIF as opposed to a video is that it's supposed to be small and short. It's not a fully-fledged video editing program like Lightworks or something. But if you export a bunch of PNG frames in a directory, you can use a bash one-liner for using ffmpeg or something to convert it to a webm or something.

for video editing you want true color

A GIF is not the same as a video like an H264.

Gimp doesn't allow exporting layers as separate images, so each time you want to export your animation, you have to save each layer manually.

You can export the entire project as an animation. Just export and then add .gif to the end and then you'll be prompted with the GIF export screen. Or, like I said, there is a plugin for APNG (Animated PNG) as well, though not many people use that. There are other addons and scripts you can make too. But again, this is sort of like complaining that a hammer is not good for eating a salad with. You need the right tool for the right job. GIMP is good for certain things, but it's not intended to be used for everything. I use GIMP, but I don't use it for every single thing that requires image or video editing.

You have to be early Disney level artist to make something remotely good looking with Gimp.

Not really. But yeah, Krita is better for drawing. I use Krita and GIMP because there are some things that are better in one program compared to the other. I used to use Photoshop and it's better in some ways, but not all. Not all software is the same.